"There is no such thing as collective or racial achievement. There are only individual minds and individual achievements - and a culture is not the anonymous product of undifferentiated masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men," Ayn Rand (The Virture of Selfishness, 148).
Ayn Rand makes a very strong statement about collective achievements not existing, but is something that requires a group of people a collective achievement or an individual achievement? Is war a collective achievement?
War is not a collective achievement; war is the sum of the individual achievements of individual men. To win a war, one must have individuals fighting on the ground, individuals relaying messages and information, and individuals planning out the attacks and defenses. All of these individuals are fighting to protect their individual rights and individual lives. Individuals can join forces against a common enemey, but that does not make them a collective and it does not make them sacrifice their individuality.
What about the founding of the United States of America? A group of citizens banded together to create their own country and overthrow the tyranny of Great Britain, surely that must be a collective acheivement. Great Britain oppressed the individual, all individuals, and the individuals stood up against that oppression.
The Constitution does not form a collecive; the Constitution is an agreement between individuals with similar moral values. Ayn Rand states, "Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful coexistence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights - and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members" (150). Without individual rights, there would be no United States, there would be no Constitution. Communism and socialism aim to promote and sustain the common good through collective achievements. If your neighbor slacks off at work and you break your bakc, you will get a raise but so will your neighbor. A collective achievement would reward everyone equally, even though not everyone contributed equally. If the United States' military wins a war, we all get to be on the winning side, but not everyone receives a medal.
Let's scale things down a bit and examine the light bulb. Is the light bulb a collective achievement? Edison did not invent the light bulb on his own, he had people helping him. Unfortunately, we are going to have to simplify the story of the invention of the light bulb because Edison did not invent the first light bulb, but he did invent the first practical light bulb. Is Edison's invention a collective achievement if others helped him? Is my blog post a collective achievement? I did not invent or manufacture the computer I am typing on, I did not invent the internet nor do I maintain any servers, and yet not many people would argue that this blog post is my individual achievement.
The light bulb is the individual achievement of Edison, but it is also the individual achievement of the rest of his team. Edison paid his team, and each one of his team members can be proud of their individual achievement. The success of the light bulb depended on the talents of several individuals, individuals that cooperated under the banner of a dream that was shared, but also a dream that belonged to the individuals, not the group.
Your American dream may not match my American dream, and yet we both have an American dream. As individuals, we are free to pursue our own dreams to better ourselves. Often these pursuits lead to the betterment of our way of life, but the goal is not to better the lives of everyone, but to better the life of ourselves, whether it be through a monetary betterment (through product/service sales) or a convenience betterment (a letter opener instead of using your fingers). People may think they are acting to realize a collective achievement, but they are really acting to realize their own individual achievement. A sniper shoots an enemy combatant to save the lives of the rest of his unit, but the reason he wants to save their lives is because his life may depend on the individuals in his unit being able to do their jobs.
The reason collective achievements do not exist is because individuals act for selfish reasons and individuals should act for selfish reasons. Edison did not invent the first practical light bulb to make his team rich, but he was willing to pay the individuals for their worthy contributions. In war it is individuals fighting individuals; it is no different than Edison and his ligh bulb. The general enlists the infantry to help him realize his goal and he rewards them accordingly. The individuals are fighting for their own selfish reasons; maybe they want money, maybe they want to defend their individual freedoms, or maybe they enjoy killing. Whatever the reason, they are there because they want to be there. If they did not want to participate, they would find a way to dodge service or dodge the draft.
Collective achievements do not exist because the common good does not exist. The individual good does exist and therefore only individual achievements can exist. Anyone enlisting you to aid in a collective achievement is hoping to convince you to sacrifice your individual rights in order to achieve their individual goal. The definition of collective achievement is the "anonymous product of undifferentiated masses." Collective achievements are the same as slavery.
© 2010 Nate Phillipps
Showing posts with label Ayn Rand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ayn Rand. Show all posts
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
A Shade of Grey
The post title might make you think that I will be talking about a Tim Burton film, but alas, that is not the case. That man uses more shades of grey in his films than anyone else I know. Somebody who is a complete stranger to grey, is Ayn Rand.
If there is black and white, which stand for good and evil, and anything between is a shade of grey, then in regard to a specific issue, does Ayn Rand fall within the grey, even though she advocates only the presence of black and white? I was asked, "It seems to me then that either Determinism or Chaos Theory can exist (the black and white). Either everything happens by chance or is pre-determined. Ayn Rand believes in free choice but denounces chance. Do you find that Ayn Rand falls in the gray here?" First, we must define determinism and chaos theory.
Determinism is the belief that every event in life was influenced by past events. So, you turned left one day instead of right and this morning your burnt your toast. Pre-destination is the idea that some higher power has every aspect of our lives mapped out. Chaos theory is that nothing in life is predictable because everything falls on a non-linear graph. For the purposes of this blog, I am going to assume that by determinism, the person who asked the question meant pre-destination.
If the only factors we consider are pre-destination and chaos, then free choice would not even be on the chart. Free choice is not the blending of pre-destination and chaos, free choice is its own entity. Therefore, we must conclude that there are more than two beliefs of how life works. Free choice would mean that our lives are shaped by our choices, which we make by engaging our brains, accumulating data, and making informed decisions. So there are at least three different opinions. How would these three combine to give us a shade of grey?
A shade of grey would be the belief that 1/3 of life is pre-destined, 1/3 of life is chaos, and 1/3 of life is due to our own choices. However, that belief would never hold any water in any rational discussion, because we are merely trying to get the best of all three options. All three options cannot be correct, which means two of the options (assuming of course that there are a maximum number of three options) are wrong. Which one is right? For the purposes of this blog, the rightness or wrongness is not an issue, and bringing that into this assessment would only complicate things.
Ayn Rand's argument about black, white and grey, is that people who generally believe in the grey claim there is no black or white. She writes, in The Virtue of Selfishness, "If there is no black and white, there can be no gray - since gray is merely a mixture of the two." Which only goes to show that Ayn Rand believes there is a black and white. She says, "When a man has ascertained that one alternative is good and the other is evil, he has no justification for choosing a mixture." Meaning, he has no justification for choosing grey. If you know one thing is right and the other is wrong, you have no rationalization for picking something in the middle.
But what about an issue where the good and evil may not be easily discernible? "If, in a complex moral issue, a man struggles to determine what is right, and fails or makes an honest error, he cannot be regarded as 'gray'; morally he is 'white.' Errors of knowledge are not breeches of morality; no proper moral code can demand infallibility or omniscience," writes Rand. This is not to say you won't be held accountable for your mistake, only that you are not violating your moral code if you do make a mistake, an honest mistake. She also says that if you are actively refusing knowledge in such a dilemma, that you would be violating your moral code, and would be evil.
Knowledge is good. Refusing knowledge is evil. We accept the fact that there is good and there is evil. Some people believe there is a mixture in the middle. There are people who fall in the middle. The difference comes into play in defining the middle. Most people would say the middle is grey. Ayn Rand says anything not good, is evil. If you're in the middle, you are not good, so you must be evil. To bring this back to the original question, of Ayn Rand embracing free choice but denouncing chance being a shade of grey does not make any logical sense, because life can't be chaos and free choice at the same time. Ayn Rand embraces what she believes and anything she doesn't believe is considered evil. Ayn Rand falls firmly within the construct of black and white because, based on her knowledge, she believes in free choice, not a variation of different alternatives.
© 2010 Nate Phillipps
If there is black and white, which stand for good and evil, and anything between is a shade of grey, then in regard to a specific issue, does Ayn Rand fall within the grey, even though she advocates only the presence of black and white? I was asked, "It seems to me then that either Determinism or Chaos Theory can exist (the black and white). Either everything happens by chance or is pre-determined. Ayn Rand believes in free choice but denounces chance. Do you find that Ayn Rand falls in the gray here?" First, we must define determinism and chaos theory.
Determinism is the belief that every event in life was influenced by past events. So, you turned left one day instead of right and this morning your burnt your toast. Pre-destination is the idea that some higher power has every aspect of our lives mapped out. Chaos theory is that nothing in life is predictable because everything falls on a non-linear graph. For the purposes of this blog, I am going to assume that by determinism, the person who asked the question meant pre-destination.
If the only factors we consider are pre-destination and chaos, then free choice would not even be on the chart. Free choice is not the blending of pre-destination and chaos, free choice is its own entity. Therefore, we must conclude that there are more than two beliefs of how life works. Free choice would mean that our lives are shaped by our choices, which we make by engaging our brains, accumulating data, and making informed decisions. So there are at least three different opinions. How would these three combine to give us a shade of grey?
A shade of grey would be the belief that 1/3 of life is pre-destined, 1/3 of life is chaos, and 1/3 of life is due to our own choices. However, that belief would never hold any water in any rational discussion, because we are merely trying to get the best of all three options. All three options cannot be correct, which means two of the options (assuming of course that there are a maximum number of three options) are wrong. Which one is right? For the purposes of this blog, the rightness or wrongness is not an issue, and bringing that into this assessment would only complicate things.
Ayn Rand's argument about black, white and grey, is that people who generally believe in the grey claim there is no black or white. She writes, in The Virtue of Selfishness, "If there is no black and white, there can be no gray - since gray is merely a mixture of the two." Which only goes to show that Ayn Rand believes there is a black and white. She says, "When a man has ascertained that one alternative is good and the other is evil, he has no justification for choosing a mixture." Meaning, he has no justification for choosing grey. If you know one thing is right and the other is wrong, you have no rationalization for picking something in the middle.
But what about an issue where the good and evil may not be easily discernible? "If, in a complex moral issue, a man struggles to determine what is right, and fails or makes an honest error, he cannot be regarded as 'gray'; morally he is 'white.' Errors of knowledge are not breeches of morality; no proper moral code can demand infallibility or omniscience," writes Rand. This is not to say you won't be held accountable for your mistake, only that you are not violating your moral code if you do make a mistake, an honest mistake. She also says that if you are actively refusing knowledge in such a dilemma, that you would be violating your moral code, and would be evil.
Knowledge is good. Refusing knowledge is evil. We accept the fact that there is good and there is evil. Some people believe there is a mixture in the middle. There are people who fall in the middle. The difference comes into play in defining the middle. Most people would say the middle is grey. Ayn Rand says anything not good, is evil. If you're in the middle, you are not good, so you must be evil. To bring this back to the original question, of Ayn Rand embracing free choice but denouncing chance being a shade of grey does not make any logical sense, because life can't be chaos and free choice at the same time. Ayn Rand embraces what she believes and anything she doesn't believe is considered evil. Ayn Rand falls firmly within the construct of black and white because, based on her knowledge, she believes in free choice, not a variation of different alternatives.
© 2010 Nate Phillipps
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